Food flavors and food safety

Flavorings are substances used to impart taste and/or smell to food, and/or to intensify the existing flavors or products.  These include spices, herbs, flavor enhancers, natural and synthetic flavors and sweeteners.

The Codex Alimentarius defines flavoring substances as being chemically defined:  they may he produced by chemical synthesis or are obtained from materials of plant or animal origin.

This category is subdivided accordingly into natural flavoring substances and synthetic flavoring substances.

Flavorings have a long history of safe use in a wide variety of foods, from confectionary and soft drinks to cereals, cakes, and yoghurts.

Many flavoring substances in common use were listed as GRAS shortly after passage of the 1958Food Additive Amendment.

Regulations designed to ensure that a flavor mixture is safe to consume have generally developed around the concept of creating ‘positive lists’ of allowed safe ingredients.

Further evaluation of flavors is now done by the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers’ Association Expert Panel, a group of independent scientists which investigates the safety of flavoring substances in foods under conditions of intended use.

The safety evaluation of flavoring agents presents a special challenge. Flavoring substances are generally consumed in low amounts, but there are several thousand individual flavoring substances in commercial use worldwide.

There is general agreement that the stances shall only be used of an evaluation has concluded that their use in food does not pose a risk to the consumer at the estimated levels of intake.
Food flavors and food safety 

GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe)

GRAS lists a list of ingredients established by the FDA that had long been in use and were believed safe.

The Generally Recognized as Safe list was established in 1958 by Congress. Those substances that were being added to food over a long time, which under conditions of their intended use were generally recognized as safe by qualified scientists, would be exempt from premarket clearance.

After questions were raised about the safety of some GRAS ingredients, FDA initiated a review of these ingredients in 1972.

FDA utilized the scientific expertise of an independent organization, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, to assist in the evaluation, which spanned a decade.

Substances on the GRAS list are not officially considered food additives, so they are exempt from the legal requirement of proving their safety.

However, GRAS substances are continually reevaluated, and as new methods for testing are developed, some substances are removed from the GRAS list.

GRAS status requires consensus, but not unanimity, among epxo9erts qualified by scientific training and experience.

Under the FD&C Act, GRAS determination must be made ‘among experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate its safety, as having been adequately shown through scientific procedures’.
GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe)

Adulteration

Adulteration
Adulteration is not difficult to determine since there are tests that can be made to detect sources of contamination such as rodents (hair, pellet, or urine), insects, dirt and other detritus.

Also, if a food is putrid this can be detected by the ordinary human sense, a fact this is well known and accepted.

However, the detection of decomposition is not easy and often scientist do not agree on what constitutes decomposition of a particular food. Citations based in the development of a food, therefore, frequently have to be settled in court.

Regarding activities that may be present in foods, the administration and the industry known that certain chemicals are toxic and cannot be added to foods at all.

The FDA has a GRAS (generally regard as safe) list that specifies which chemicals may be added for foods and, in many instances how much may be added to a particular food.

Many compounds on this list come under what is called the Grandfather Clause, these chemicals having been used in foods for years with no apparent ill effect.

For some chemicals that can be added to foods and for any new chemicals that will be added, tests have been or will be made by feeding several kinds of animals a diet containing the chemical over a period of several generations.

The results of such tests are determined by observations in the weight and general health of the animals, as well as their ability to breed, and on autopsies and chemical tests for specific enzyme activities and so on.

Time, trained personal and special facilities are required for testing as new food additive.

This is a very expensive process, requiring as a rule, the outlay of several hundred thousand dollars and no producer of such a new compound is apt to initiate such testing, which must satisfy the FDA, unless he is certain that the new additive will provide specific advantage and have great utilities.
Adulteration